1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an integrated system which routes messages such as e-mail, voice mail, video, faxes, instant messages, etc. In particular, the present invention relates to the use of existing demographic, and/or other personal information, and/or affinity flags, and/or location flags, and/or time and date flags to create universal identifiers and filters for the purpose of routing and delivering messages. These may originate in the form of e-mail, instant messages, voice input, video input, etc. These messages may be delivered to devices such as, but not limited to cell phones, computers, PDAs, pagers, fax machines, interactive TVs, video displays, kiosks, and/or other devices over a switched and/or packet network.
2. Problems in the Art
No single approach to unified messaging contains all the necessary features in order to create a truly “unified” messaging system. Two pending patents, Ranalli, Douglas, J., et al, International Publication Number WO 00/41383, and Hamilton, Michael, et al, International Publication Number WO 00/54488, incorporated herein by reference, describe similar approaches to unified messaging systems. The Ranalli patent anticipates the rise of Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and describes a version of a unified messaging system in which telephone numbers are correlated to an Internet address to enable communications over the Internet. It goes on to describe the use of unique identifiers to further enhance the system. One embodiment of the Ranalli patent application uses ENUM as an e-mail alias. ENUM is an initiative of the telephone numbering working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) which describes a mechanism using the Internet Domain Name System (DNS) to map E.164 numbers to URLs. E.164 is an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standard that describes the format of telephone numbers used around the world. The proliferation of a multitude of communication devices that access different networks such as public switched telephone network (PSTN) and Internet, through different address conventions such as phone number, email address, etc., and input capabilities (telephone, computer, PDA) has created a problem. This creates the need for a method which allows easy accessing of the growing list of emerging devices and appliances, regardless of the platform to which they are connected or which device is being used to access the information. ENUM, a partial solution to this growing problem, is a convergence solution that bridges PSTN and Internet networks. One of the side benefits of the ENUM initiative is single number connectivity to an individuals land-line phone(s), mobile phone(s), fax(s), etc. However, ENUM is not a complete solution as it is dependant on knowledge of a telephone number as a unique identifier.
The Hamilton patent application previously mentioned describes a version of a unified messaging system which creates e-mail aliases from a telephone number and correlates them to an X.509 digital certificate. The Hamilton patent application also uses automatic number identification (ANI) and/or Caller-ID as a security feature for distributing private keys for X.509 digital certificates. Both the Ranalli and Hamilton patent applications can be used as global directories, and allow for personal control of messaging. While these are unique methods for aggregating and routing messages based on telephone numbers, they are not all inclusive in their scope of various aliases that can be used in a unified messaging system.
Microsoft Outlook, a widely used personal and enterprise contact manager and e-mail program can contain the same basic demographic information and telephone numbers discussed in the Hamilton and Ranalli patent applications, but is not capable of using aliases to send and receive e-mail messages. However, Microsoft Outlook is capable of using digital certificates as described in the Hamilton and Ranalli patent applications.
Novell's eDirectory software product is an enterprise-level unified messaging system. The eDirectory software is a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)-enabled, directory-based identity management system that centralizes the management of user identities, access privileges and other network resources.
The Ranalli and Hamilton patent applications previously mentioned, Microsoft's Outlook, and Novell's eDirectory do not include references to geo-spatial coordinates, such as latitude, longitude, time, or combinations of these, as unique identifiers. Also, none of these patents or software applications use affinity flags, and/or location flags, and/or calendar flags as keys for unified messaging.
Also, neither the Ranalli nor Hamilton patent applications previously mentioned include the use of the television sets connected via the cable TV network, or a next generation intelligent network as a method for delivering e-mails using the readily available cable TV customer database which includes telephone number and street address which can be used as e-mail aliases.
In 2000, the United States Post Office stated its intentions to set-up a secure, individual electronic mail box and e-mail address that associates a person's street address, with usps.com to create an e-mail address based on location. However, such a system would be limited because it uses only street addresses as unique identifiers for users of their system. It does not use references to geo-spatial coordinates, such as latitude, longitude, time, or combinations of these, as unique identifiers. In addition, such an approach requires enormous costs to set-up and maintain hundreds of millions of electronic mail boxes.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,185,290 to Shaffer et al, incorporated herein by reference, describes databases with geo-spatial key references linked to telephone numbers. Shaffer et al. describes an intelligent call processing system that provides service benefits to a caller, a servicing location and/or a vanity number advertiser during a call, parallel to the call and/or post call in an integrated common architecture. To provide these benefits, the system utilizes a virtual telephone number database containing a nation-wide master list of telephone numbers with thousands of attribute data items associated by geo-spatial keys linked to each telephone number. Although Shaffer et al. links telephone numbers to geo-spatial keys, it does not do so for the purpose of unified messaging.
Quova, Inc.'s services are based upon the company's patent-pending techniques to map Internet infrastructure information associated with a known universe of over four billion IP addresses on the Internet. Quova's worldwide network of servers provides the geographic location of Internet users when they access a Web site. Quova's enterprise-class solution, GeoPoint, determines geographic location by continent, country, region, state, DMA (designated market area), metropolitan area, and city. The downside of Quova's technology is that it is not as accurate as geo-positions related to GPS or even street address information. Also, Quova is a service and not a self-provisioning feature of a client device originating a message, which causes extra time on the network infrastructure.
A radical advance in message routing is described in U.S. Patent application 20010036183 to Melick, et al, incorporated herein by reference and also, in part, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,236,652 to Preston et al. These references provide for conversion of geo-spatial coordinates, such as latitude/longitude, to an addressing scheme (GeoIP) for communication packet routing that supports current TCP/IP (IPv4) and future addressing (IPv6) requirements. GeoIP is an instantaneous addressing system based on the location of a sender in relationship to the geo-coordinates of the recipient. Currently, computers route telephone calls and telecommunication packets using cell locations, IP addresses, referencing look-up tables and utilizing complicated mathematics.
Currently, IP addresses are numbers assigned by the network which would simply be replaced by a geographic position coordinate (X, Y, Z) or (Latitude, Longitude, Altitude). Such geographic positions may be constantly changing, and therefore the GeoIP address of the device connected to the network is constantly changing. These changes are accommodated by reporting the current position to a telecommunication network, in the same manner as is currently done in the cellular phone industry.
Preston et al. depends on GPS for latitude/longitude information. Melick et al. previously mentioned, uses GPS, UWB, other radio-based location systems, and/or electronic map GIS data to create a seamless, global reference for all fixed and mobile transmission and receiving devices. By using geoposition data as an instantaneous routing header, telecommunication switches will simply compare the location of the sender, the receiver, and the associated nodes to mathematically self-route packets through the network. GeoIP will greatly reduce the complexity associated with network switching and routing, and also dramatically reduces “time on network” for a data packet.
The Preston et al. patent and the Melick et al. patent application previously mentioned, describe only methods to route telecommunications, however, they do not combine the routing function for use as instantaneous geo-spatial alias for use in a unified messaging system. Also, neither reference uses a software utility on a stationary device, such as a desktop PC, as a self-provisioning feature that uses basic physical addresses and zip code information to create a GeoIP address.
Software utilities, such as Microsoft Passport, an electronic wallet initiative for completing on-line transactions, contain the basic demographic and personal information used for unified messaging as described in the Ranalli and Hamilton, but require a specific e-mail address to enable communication. In addition, Microsoft Passport does not use references to geo-spatial coordinates, such as latitude, longitude, time, or a combination of these, as unique identifiers
In addition to common top level domain names such as .com, .org, .gov, there are country codes such as us for the United States, .uk for the United Kingdom, etc., which are high-level geographic references, but do not provide enough granularity to deliver and concatenate messages for a specific user.
There is therefore a need for creating a unified messaging system that addresses the shortcomings described above, and uses any available demographic and/or personal information relating to a person, business, or enterprise, as unique identifiers, which are referenced to geo-spatial coordinates.